A military response to cyberattacks is preposterous

By Guest Contributor

June 2, 2011

By Benjamin H. Friedman and Christopher Preble
The opinions expressed are their own.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Pentagon’s first cyber security strategy will say that cyberattacks can be acts of war meriting retaliatory military attack. The policy threatens to repeat the overreaction and needless conflict that plagued American foreign policy in the past decade. It builds on national hysteria about threats to cybersecurity, the latest bogeyman to justify our bloated national security state. A wiser approach would put the threat in context to calm public fears and avoid threats that diminish future flexibility.

A key challenge in responding to “cyberattacks” is defining that term. Reporters sometimes use it to describe hackers stealing credit card numbers or intellectual property. Website vandalism and denial-of-service attacks, where attackers flood websites with requests to overburden and disable them, are often included. Electronic espionage, including the theft of intellectual property or state secrets, also qualifies. More obvious kinds of cyberattack include attacks on military communication systems and hacking that sabotages infrastructure like electricity grids, water systems, or online banking.

The idea of responding militarily to most of these threats is preposterous. We thwart hackers with better passwords, IT professionals and policing, not aircraft carriers. We do not threaten to bomb countries caught spying on us in traditional ways and should not do so just because the prefix “cyber” applies.

The Pentagon will reportedly avoid this definitional difficulty with a policy of “equivalence,” where only cyberattacks creating destruction on par with traditional military attacks qualify as acts of war. The trouble is that some acts of war, like naval blockades, damage only commerce. The same goes for all reported cyberattacks. Launching a war to retaliate for a non-lethal attack seems disproportionate, especially where it is unclear whether the attacker served the government. Taken literally, the new policy might have us risking nuclear exchange with Russia because it failed to stop teenagers in Moscow Internet cafés from attacking Citibank.com.

The real obstacle to making sensible cybersecurity policy is hysteria, which drowns out common sense. Cyberattacks have never killed an American, yet Senator Carl Levin compared them to weapons of mass destruction. His colleague Jay Rockefeller said they “can shut this country down.” Mike McConnell, the former director of national intelligence, called cyberattacks on financial systems “the equivalent of today’s nuclear weapon.”

These claims rely on the assertions of authorities like White House official-turned-security-consultant Richard Clarke. In a book that Wired reviewed under the title “File Under Fiction,” Clarke and a co-author suggest that hackers could plunge our nation into chaos in minutes by shutting off power, crashing planes, flooding dams and shutting down stock trading. They obscure the fact that managers of that infrastructure prevent such catastrophes by decoupling it from the public Internet and having backup systems. Clarke ignores evidence showing that hackers have never caused a power outage, and that people rarely panic and loot when the lights go out.

We exaggerate online threats for the same reason we exaggerate other security threats: our information about the danger comes largely from those that benefit from the provision of defenses against it.

The media will print almost any claim about cyberwar, which combines two of its favorite subjects: disaster and the Internet. Pundits and ambitious officials know that doomsday predictions about the next big thing bring attention, promotions and contracting gigs. There is less reward in noting that the Internet heightens economic resilience by making it easier to replace suppliers and distributing information critical to most enterprises.

The $10 billion-plus that the federal government will spend this year on IT security creates a chorus of alarm among contractors and the communities where they park jobs. And agencies involved in cybersecurity — the National Security Agency, the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon’s Strategic Command, for starters — justify their budgets with cyberalarm.

Competition for power also contributes to the problem. Agencies compete to own cybersecurity policy, as do the Congressional committees that oversee them. Several dozen cybersecurity bills now sit before Congress. Each request for authority, funds or legislative action comes with a claim that inaction leaves us vulnerable.

Cyberfears are not altogether phony. The Internet makes it harder to keep information private, facilitating crimes. Managing the problem requires a mix of liability, regulatory and law enforcement reforms, mostly in state capitals. The federal government has a role to play in securing its networks and secrets, pursuing hackers abroad, reporting on them and developing offensive hacking capabilities. The Stuxnet virus that afflicted Iran’s nuclear program demonstrates that U.S. intelligence agencies and those of our allies’ are the leading practitioners of cybersabotage. We should keep it that way.

Foreign powers know that killing Americans, whatever the means, will bring retaliation. Reminding them is sensible, but threatening war given vague hypotheticals may simply encourage belligerent decisions in the future. Rather than exaggerate our vulnerabilities, public officials should herald our resilience, noting that most cyberattacks create hassle, not catastrophe, and that our ability to swiftly recover from even the worst attacks is our best defense.

Benjamin H. Friedman is a research fellow in defense and homeland security studies, and Christopher Preble is director of foreign policy studies, at the Cato Institute.

You said:
“It builds on national hysteria about threats to cybersecurity, the latest bogeyman to justify our bloated national security state.”

Good point. The American military-industrial complex is raping America’s economy. It, our own American military-industrial complex, is the greatest threat to our survival. They are experts in, and relish, their study of the science of killing human beings. Any human being will do. It is the most vicious of all human institutions.

[...] A military response to cyberattacks is preposterous | The Great Debate By Benjamin H. Friedman and Christopher Preble The opinions expressed are their own. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Pentagon’s first cyber security strategy will say that cyberattacks can be acts of war meriting retaliatory military attack. The policy threatens to repeat the overreaction and needless conflict that plagued American foreign policy in the past decade. [...]

So according to this article we should let anyone who wants access to our networks and private information have whatever they want. Look, if an individual walks into your house stealing files you have the right to beat the living crap out of them. There is no difference in someone stealing from your home or stealing from a private secure network. Theft is still theft and those who violate the law are bound by its consequences.

An attack on a U.S. government instillation is no different than an attack on the multiple networks it operates. This also applies to U.S. corporations that may come under attack. In these instances retaliation is a necessity.

In response to the comment about “American military-industrial complex”. Would a government that enjoys killing as you claim hand out more than $25 billion in foreign aid annually. Hmm… sounds like a bunch of murderers to me.

Benjamin H. Friedman and Christopher Preble, you are simpletons. say a cyberattack from China,for example, shuts down our electric grid, killing many people who rely on power for their respirators, etc.not to mention the damage economically.We should limit our response to a return cyberattack of our own?? you are idealistic nuts, both of you.

Of course the government wants “another” reason to promote war. Forget that Americans are war weary,that war is extremely costly, and it makes more sense to spend money on “CYBER SECURITY” i.e. protecting information where it is generated. Leave it to our government to find the MOST COSTLY solution.

Oh, and if we are going to go about promoting war for cyber attacks, I might suggest that our own government get out of the cyber attack business. What goes around comes around. If anyone thinks our government does not “hack” other governments, I’ve got a bridge to sell . . .

[...] acts of war meriting military response. Christoper Preble and I warn against this policy in an op-ed up at Reuters.com: The policy threatens to repeat the overreaction and needless conflict that [...]

flyeratplay, what do you suggest the Iraqis should have done when hundreds of thousands died from U.S. trade sanctions subsequent to “Dessert Storm”? Or for that matter what should Pakistanis do in response to the million plus people made refugees because of President Obama’s drone attacks inside Pakistan?

It would be far cheaper and save lives to have back up power such as electric generators. That is what hospitals, prisons, food stores, warehouses and schools do. The fact is we are far more likely to experience such a scenario because of severe weather or solar flares than from cyber hacking. Who would you and MrZete91 drop bombs on then? Perhaps you should both attain wisdom from the adage “Penny wise and dollar foolish”.